Is this the real life?
by TheHarleyQueen
Summary: Soulmate AU: You share fantasies with your soulmate. If you're fantasising about them, they can feel it and can join you in the fantasy if they know your identity.


_Soulmate AU: You share fantasies with your soulmate. If you're fantasising about them, they can feel it and can join you in the fantasy if they know your identity._

* * *

Evie's first Fantasy came when she was six years old. It was her birthday party, and she was _so _pretty. Mommy had given her pink lipgloss and mascara and eyeliner and coverup and had sprayed her face with some hairspray so it wouldn't rub off.

Evie had thought, then, that _everyone_ must be happy because no one could be sad when _she_ was feeling this happy

That was, until she felt someone grab her left arm at the wrist and before the elbow and _twist _the skin in different directions.

She had run to mommy, crying, but mommy had pulled her aside and slapped her, telling her that she was messing up all the pretty makeup, that she looked _ugly _now. That made Evie cry harder.

Eventually, mommy had left her in her tower, locked up, and told Evie that if she looked anything less than _perfect_ when she came back, there would be no dinner.

Evie looked perfect when Mommy came back from the party.

There was no dinner anyway.

* * *

The next time Evie felt a _real_ Fantasy, she was nine. She'd been in her tower for nearly three years, now. _Just like a real princess_. She didn't know anyone who'd want to hurt her so much, but over the years, her soulmate had often imagined little hurts- pulling her braids, tripping her up. Evie took the pain with grace, as befitting a Princess.

But, two weeks after her ninth birthday, Evie felt the tell-tale pressure against her shin that meant that her soulmate had tried to trip her, and then she felt herself falling through the air. She felt herself crash, felt her cheek split open against the pavement.

Tears welled in her eyes, but she stifled the cry that threatened to burst out. She bit her tongue so hard she could taste blood, and squeezed her eyes tight shut, ruining the carefully-applied eyeshadow.

* * *

In between the kicks, and sharp elbows thrown her way, Evie could sometimes feel softer touches- she felt her soulmate press kisses to her forehead, to her eyelids, to her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

She'd lie awake at night, wondering how her soulmate could split open her cheek the one minute and treat her so delicately in the next.

Evie had always considered herself a romantic. That was why, by her thirteenth birthday, she'd trained herself to imagine kissing someone the moment she met them. She'd like to _know_ who her soulmate is, and then she'd like to punch them in the face. She'd really like to cause them the pain they caused her whenever their mind wandered back to the fantasy of tripping her down the stairs.

So, when she was fourteen and met Harry Hook for the first time, fifteen and darkly handsome, she pictured herself pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

And was promptly thrown into shock by his step forward to kiss her back.

That meeting led to her summer at the docks. The summer where she often imagined pressing a kiss to Harry's cheek just before bed, the summer she spent at Ursula's Fish and Chips shop, the summer she came home in the late afternoon, smelling like fish and smiling prettily.

It was also the summer of her first heartbreak.

She had been angry with Harry- she couldn't remember why, anymore, but that wasn't important. She'd been _so_ furious that she, in all her fourteen-year-old glory, had stormed into Ursula's shop and smacked him across the face. Harry had looked at her, shock evident on his features, and growled a threat in her direction, before turning back to his _precious_ Gil. In response, she'd yelled at him for near fifteen minutes, demanding his attention, but he'd ignored her until she did the _worst _thing she could possibly think of, the _only_ thing she knew for sure would get his attention.

She threw all her mind into one goal and imagined picking up the knife from the table next to her (a steak knife, you couldn't afford to be picky on the Isle of the Lost) and _driving _it deep into his chest, between his fourth and fifth rib.

He didn't react.

_As it turns out, Uma wanted an in with Maleficent's group and had hoped to use Evie as an unwitting spy. Gil had just really, really not wanted his dad to know about his __**male**_ _soulmate. Harry pretending to be her soulmate was the result._

* * *

On her first day of school, four days after her sixteenth birthday, Evie burst into tears in second period.

They were in Chemistry (_Potions and Poisons_) and she'd been sitting at the front, desperately ready to pay attention, the prove to her mother that she _did _belong in the real world, outside her tower.

Evie first felt it fifteen minutes into the lesson.

Soft breath on the back of her neck, the first drops of something that burned against her skin.

Then a crescendo of pain sang across her nerves. She tried to sit still, to look pretty the way Mommy taught her, but the pain grew and _grew_ until she couldn't help it- she let out an eardrum-shattering shriek and burst into tears. Her hands flew to her hair, trying to find the source of the _awful_ pain, but there was nothing. It was just her soulmate. Again.

Dr Facilier had tried to tell her to shut _up_, had even hit her to try and make her quiet down, but the pain wasn't even _there _anymore, and she _couldn't_ stop crying. Her soulmate _hated_ her, wanted her _dead_, and when she tried to tell him as much, he laughed at her, and the class laughed with (Harry Hook, in particular, was left in _gales_ of laughter).

That was when she felt the first _other_ touch. It was soft against her scalp, and she jumped up, frantically glancing around, trying to _find them_, because they were there, they _must _be. The touches continued, soft against her skin, soothing her phantom pain.

The daughter of Maleficent refused to meet her eyes.

* * *

"_What is wrong with you?"_ Evie shouted, weeks later, when she'd _finally_ caught up to her. She'd used every trick she could think of, but the purple-haired fae girl had always managed to escape her at the last minute. Until now.

Mal rolled her eyes, arms folded defensively across her chest. She refused to look at Evie, choosing instead to glare down at her scuffed combat boots.

"You're my _soulmate!_" Evie continued, gesticulating wildly. Mommy would _kill_ her if she saw her now, ugly and blotchy and wild, "You have to stop trying to hurt me! It's weird, and mean, and really, _really_ sore!"

Mal glanced up at her, briefly, and then her eyes fixed on her, hard and angry and _magick_.

"You sure about that?" She asked, and Evie _felt_ her voice more than heard it. It echoed in her head and in her heart, laced with anger and smoke.

"After all, last time you thought someone was your soulmate, wasn't he just using you as a beard?"

Evie's shoulders wanted to come up, to protect her, but she had better control over her body than that. She looked at Mal, perfect and porcelain and nothing, and for the second time in her life, imagined driving a knife into someone's lungs.

But this time, the object of her Fantasy's hand flew to he ribcage, and she doubled over in shock.

Really, Evie had preferred the kissing method _far_ better, but people had proven that they couldn't be trusted. And it was hard to fake a reaction to suddenly being stabbed.

She cocked her head and stared, perfectly neutral, as Mal stood up and nodded, firm.

"You'll do."

"What if I don't want to?"

"Doesn't matter, because you do."

Evie's brow creased into a frown, and her hand flew to her forehead to smooth it out, "How could you _possibly _know that?"

"This Fantasy thing works both ways, sweetheart, and I've been feeling yours for years. And you haven't been _nearly_ as violent as I have."

"I've _never_ imagined you," Evie insisted, "Not once."

_She was lying. She'd often pictured her and Mal, cuddling in her bed. It had been a silly pastime, she'd thought._

"Sure." Mal smiled at her, soft for once, and offered her arm, "My lady."

Evie took it.

* * *

Sometimes, Evie forgot the difference between Fantasies and real life. She'd scream when she saw her girlfriend, remembering again acid dripping down her scalp, remembering beatings that never happened and pain that never existed. She'd lash out, falling back on that old coping mechanism, imagining driving a knife deep into her girlfriend's chest.

Sometimes, she thought about the prince she might've had, and became bitter for days on end, resenting Mal for something she had no control over.

Sometimes, Mal couldn't think beyond her mother's lessons, would fall back into old patterns of beating people in her head.

Sometimes, she forgot what year it was, forgot all that had happened, and hit Evie.

They grew together.

Auradon was good for them. It taught them everything that their parents hadn't- that they didn't need princes, or coping mechanisms, or even soulmates if they wanted.

They decided that they _did _want.

Eve Grimhilde White married her soulmate, Maleficent Bertha le Fay in a huge white ceremony on her twenty-first birthday. She'd been Fantasising about it for years, and her fiancee knew exactly what she wanted. It was perfect.


End file.
